October eNews

CAARE is building a movement to change the conversation about animal experiments, from a “necessary evil” to an outdated, inhumane and irrelevant method that doesn’t efficiently advance human medicine.

We consistently research and distribute information on the many ways in which biomedical research can be carried out effectively without animals. CAARE also speaks up for animals in laboratories through campaigns that highlight how their suffering is totally unwarranted.

We do all this on a very modest budget powered by YOU—your energy, your dollars and your voices. We take no money from CEOs or large corporations, and our tiny staff – most of whom are volunteers – ensures that your contributions go a long way.

However, increased funding will enable us to conduct far more research and campaigns than we currently can with our small team. That’s why I’m pleased to announce that we are offering beautiful digital pet portraits for a $50 contribution to CAARE. Please read more about these charming portraits and how your participation can help CAARE’s work.

And of course, we are always grateful for every donation, large or small, that helps us make sure we have the resources to keep going and even better, escalate our efforts.

Organoid production amplified by robots

“Organoids” are a new generation of three-dimensional cell cultures derived from human cells. In recent years, these models have shown superior ability over animal tests to mimic the function of human organs.

Now a team of investigators at University of Washington are using robots to enhance the process by producing organoids in large quantities that can be used for toxicity and drug testing. Working with kidney cells, the robots created 384 testing chambers over 21 days. Additional testing of the organoids confirmed that they accurately emulate human kidney physiology on a complex level, and even revealed a new finding: that the protein myosin plays a role in polycystic kidney disease.

Currently we are lacking human relevant tissue models which impacts the ability to study the infectious disease process, resulting in a 90 percent failure rate of drugs in clinical trials after tests in animals. Worse still, we are lacking adequate vaccines for many pathogens responsible for potentially lethal diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS and serious diarrheal disease.

Cheryl Nickerson professor at the ASU Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy, explains: "By mimicking the structure and function of native tissues in the body, 3-D tissue models are powerful tools that serve as next generation platforms to unveil novel underlying principles of infectious disease, streamline vaccine/therapeutic discovery, predict how humans will respond to vaccines and other therapeutics, and increase likelihood of success in the most expensive part of vaccine development -- human clinical trials. Moreover, the ability to create these models from patient samples offers exciting potential for personalized medicine."

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